Promise & Peril: Donald Trump moderate on inversion tax
Bernard Weinstein, an economist at smu, talks about Donald Trump's plan to impose a special 10 percent tax on profits U.S. firms hold overseas, and reduce the U.S. tax on future overseas earnings from 35 percent to 15 percent to encourage compliance.
By Jack Encarnacao and Chris Cassidy
Donald Trump has staked out an uncharacteristically moderate position on one of the campaign’s hottest issues — bringing home some $100 billion in tax revenues on earnings U.S. multinational companies have parked overseas after moving their headquarters to tax-haven nations.
Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, proposes a special 10 percent tax on profits U.S. firms hold overseas, and reduces the U.S. tax on future overseas earnings from 35 percent to 15 percent to encourage compliance. Those rates are only slightly lower than what President Obama proposed, and higher than rates proposed by House Republicans two years ago. . .
Bernard Weinstein, an economist at Southern Methodist University, gave Trump credit for acknowledging that the economy has to recover at a faster pace with more job creation, but warned that he lacks an actual blueprint for prosperity.
“He has touched on a real concern,” Weinstein said. “Normally, when you’re six or seven years out of a severe economic downturn, you’re growing a lot faster than we are. … (But) I haven’t heard any specifics I believe would do much to stimulate the economy.”